wfn.org | UCC efforts to stop church burnings

[powellb@ucc.org]

          Here is the most recent release of the UCC Office of
          Communication, about UCC efforts to stop African-American
          church burnings and aid arson victims.

July 1, 1996
Office of Communication
United Church of Christ

William C. Winslow (NYC)
(212) 870-2137
Barb Powell (Cleveland)
(216) 736-2222

On the World Wide Web:
http://www.apk.net/ucc

United Church of Christ continues efforts to stop
African-American church burnings and aid arson victims

      CLEVELAND -- When the Rev. Paul H. Sherry, president of
the United Church of Christ, joined other church leaders at a
June 26 breakfast meeting with President Clinton, it was the
latest in a series of UCC efforts to keep national attention
focused on stopping the burning of African-American churches and
offer relief to the burned churches. 
      Sherry was one of a group of church leaders invited to the
White House June 26 to hear Clinton and his top aides report
what the government is doing to stop the arson and apprehend and
prosecute those responsible, and to discuss with  religious
leaders additional steps that may be taken.
      "I came away from the meeting very encouraged," said
Sherry.  "I believe that both the President and our religious
communities are firmly committed to put a stop to this ugly
behavior and to address the root causes."
      According to the National Council of Churches, the FBI has
under investigation 216 churches that have been burned since
1989, 70 percent of them African-American or integrated and all
but a handful in the South.  But churches and the press were
slow to recognize the epidemic of charred timbers and 
smoldering foundations.
      "It is a moral outrage that in 1996 this nation tolerates
the continuation of such violence," said Sherry.  "Thank God we
are beginning to respond."
      As Bernice Powell Jackson, Executive Director of the UCC's
Commission for Racial Justice, said in a statement issued at a
press conference in Washington June 10, "May God's spirit kindle
a holy fire that causes people of faith to break the silence,
react against he violence and demand an end to these outrageous
attacks upon our brothers and sisters in Christ."

United Church of Christ response
      In May 1996, Church World Service, the relief agency of
the National Council of Churches, issued an appeal for $1
million.  One of the first to respond was the United Church
Board for World Ministries, the UCC's overseas mission and
disaster relief arm, which send a check for $5,000 out of One
Great Hour of Sharing funds. Later, the World Board added
another $20,000 while the United Church Board for Homeland
Ministries, the church's U.S. mission arm, donated $50,000. 
Subsequently, with almost daily church torchings being reported,
the National Council of Churches upped its fund appeal to $4
million.
      The World Board's Office for the Global Sharing of
Resources has made an appeal to all UCC churches asking that
contributions, designated "Rebuild the Burned Churches," be sent
to regional conference offices, with the request that monies be
transmitted as soon as possible to the World Board's Global
Sharing office at 475 Riverside Dr., 16th floor, New York, NY
10115.  Each conference also has received a six-minute video
"The Burning of Black churches 1996."
      The Rev. Linda Petrucelli, Global Sharing executive, notes
that contributions can also be made in the form of donated
labor.  Habitat for Humanity is looking for people to physically
rebuild the churches.  For information, contact, Rick Beech,
Habitat for Humanity, P.O. Box 1497, Murfreesboro, TN 37133-
1497.

UCC regional conferences and local congregations meet challenge
      Meanwhile, United Church of Christ conferences and
churches across the country are responding.  The UCC's New
Hampshire Conference at its annual meeting set a goal of
$20,000, while the Minnesota Conference asked its predominantly
white membership to visit African-American congregations and
volunteer to help rebuild torched churches.  The Massachusetts
Conference took up a collection at its annual meeting and raised
over $1,700. 
      The 312 churches in the Illinois Conference have been
encouraged to hang a symbolic piece of charred wood on their
front doors "as an act of solidarity," and contributed $3,620 at
the conference's annual meeting.  And when arsonists incinerated
Immanuel Christian Fellowship, an African-American church in
Portland, Ore., the Rev. Ann Duffy, pastor of nearby Zion United
Church of Christ in Gresham, Ore., organized an ecumenical
service to remind the community that "these things don't just
happen in the South."
      "We are all guilty," she said.  An offering taken at the
service was shared, with one-third going to the National Council
of Churches and the balance going to the congregation of the
destroyed church.  As President Sherry said in a press statement
June 10, "An outcry by all people of faith is needed now, lest
people as well as buildings become targets of these ugly and
violent attacks."
      One of the most unusual bequests will be coming from the
105,000 brothers of Phi Beta Sigma, an international
organization of college, business and professional men founded
82 years ago at Howard University, an historically black college
in Washington, D.C.  The fraternity's national Executive
Director, Dr. Lawrence E. Miller, has asked the fraternity's 651
chapters send contributions directly to the United Church Board
for World Ministries.  Miller, a member of People's
Congregational Church, a United Church congregation in
Washington, D.C., said it was a natural thing to turn to the
church.  He has been a UCC member since he was 12 and has served
on the denomination's Executive Council.
      The 1.5-million-member United Church of Christ, with
national offices in Cleveland, has more than 6,100 congregations
in the United States and Puerto Rico.  It was formed by the 1957
union of the Congregational Christian Churches and the
Evangelical and Reformed Church.
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